Another remarkable result exhibited by the census statistics of Maryland since 1790, is the increase of the free colored population, in contrast with the diminution of slaves. The slave population of our State amounted in 1790 to 103,036; in 1810 it reached 111,502, its maximum. Since 1810 it has fallen to 89,619. The free colored population on the other hand, which in 1790 was only 8,043, has increased to 61,093. In a few years it must exceed the slave population, for the one is increasing while the other decreases--a double process which must soon annihilate the difference of some twenty-five thousand. The number of manumissions reported to the commissioners of the State Colonization Fund from 1831 to 1845, under the act of the former year, was 2,988. This shows an average of some two hundred and more annually. I am not sure that this number exhibits all the manumissions. It is enough, however, to show the tendency of things. With all the restrictions which legislation has imposed upon manumissions they still go on. It may be taken for certain that they will go on; that nothing can stop them. Year after year the scruples of slaveholders in some parts of the State prompt to manumission. The death beds of many afford the occasions for giving these scruples force. It is useless to reason about a thing of this sort. Emancipation in Maryland must go on. In my humble judgment it is going on too fast--and for the simple reason that we are not making adequate preparation for the new condition of things which must ensue. The contrast presented by the progress of the free States, within fifty years, and by that of the slaveholding States for the same period, is so familiar that it would be useless to burden these pages with statistics to illustrate it. It may be sufficient to state, in respect to the increase of population, that in 1790 the free States, including Massachusetts and Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had a population of 1,971,455; while the slaveholding States, Delaware, Maryland, with the District, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, contained 1,852,494 inhabitants. In 1840 the same free States numbered a population of 6,761,082, and the same slaveholding States had an entire population of 3,827,110. The former increased in a ratio more than double as compared with the latter.